Appropriations bills exist in order to approve the Executive to spend taxpayer money on expenditures which have not received specific parliamentary approval (via statute).
This is all part of what the government terms the “Business of Supply.” In general terms, the Business of Supply (or “BS,” if you prefer) breaks down as follows:
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Tax revenues are collected and deposited into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF);
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The CRF is the aggregate of all public monies that are on deposit at the credit of the Receiver General for Canada (cash is held in chartered banks and the Bank of Canada);
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Parliament appropriates (allocates) the funds held in the CRF to government through appropriation acts (statutes);
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The government then spends these monies for the delivery of goods and services to the public through departments, agencies, Crown corporations, etc.
- The public responds favourably or unfavourably to the spending initiatives.
Appropriations Acts, also called Supply Acts, grant the government the ability to spend an arbitrary amount of money (specified in each Act) on whatever; expenditures not expressly approved by any statute defining an appropriate recurring government expense (such as Canada’s socialized health care, social insurance, etc, all of which are statutory). In the 2002-2003 fiscal year, these non statutory random allotments of money amounted to over $56 billion, or more than 33% of the estimated budget.
I believe that the current parliamentary appropriations process leads to gross waste of taxpayer money. I would work to restructure this process to make it harder for the Executive to summon money on a whim, to improve the capability of Parliament to more tightly control how taxpayer money is spent, in order to make parliamentary expenditures more responsible to the Canadian taxpayer.
For this reason, I will universally vote “Nay” on any appropriations bill in the House of Commons, with the possible exception of any statutory (ie. recurring) appropriations bills which specifically mark taxpayer funds to go toward programs which I believe are truly in line with the proper role of government (more to be posted later on the proper role of government).